EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYMENT GENERATION IN LAFIA METROPOLIS (A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED SMALL SCALE ENTERPRISE)

EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYMENT GENERATION IN LAFIA METROPOLIS (A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED SMALL SCALE ENTERPRISE)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background to Study

There is no country in the modern world where an improvement in the material level of living is not regarded as a desirable goal by rulers and citizens alike. The growing acceptance of the need to do something for the poor, can be noticed in the numerous poverty alleviation programmes in Nigeria, the average Nigerian still lives subsist below the absolute poverty line. Amongst the challenges that confront Nigeria, a major contributory factor was the style and expectations of the development strategy that was pursued and faced with this failure; the need for a meaningful national development is not only necessary but also imperative. To this end, a lot of economic reform programmes or strategies have evolved but recently special emphasis is being made on self-reliance via entrepreneur and its numerous small and medium enterprises. The economic success of the countries of south east, Asia, and America is traceable to the contributions made by self-reliant individuals (entrepreneurs), through their numerous small medium development depend on the entrepreneur who makes a living by creating new business new jobs and new ideas.

Entrepreneur means different things to different people. In other to appreciate this study more, some concepts that are associated with this study will be explained.According to Oxford advanced Learner’s dictionary it defines entrepreneur as a person who starts or organizes a commercial enterprises, especially one involving financial risk. To an economist, entrepreneur is one who brings resources, labour, materials and other assets into combination that make their value greater than before and who introduce changes, innovations and a new order. Entrepreneurs are the risk takers who create businesses; they assemble all the factors of production in an effort to start and operate a business and to make a profit. For Schumpeter “the whole process of economic change hung ultimately on the person who makes it happen–the entrepreneurs”. Entrepreneurship involves combining to initiate changes in production hence it is essentially the promotion of economic change, it is a process involving the entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial career. Hirsch and Peters in their text entitled entrepreneurship: describes this process as one of creating something difficult with value by devoting the necessary time and assuming the accompanying financial, psychic and social risks and receiving the resulting, the rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction.

In Nigeria, many policies are constantly being implemented to ensure their survival which will in turn enable them contribute maximally to economic development but there challenges were intensified more by the perennial energy crisis, weak infrastructure, poor import and export policies, tariff structure among others, which have prevailed in the country for some time now. These have, inevitably led to the near collapse and failure of the small scale enterprises. The government of this country should look into the modalities of solving these challenges. It is therefore against this background that this work sets out to evaluate entrepreneurship development in Lafia Metropolis, Nassarawa State, considering some small scale enterprises.

EFFECTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT ON EMPLOYMENT GENERATION IN LAFIA METROPOLIS (A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED SMALL SCALE ENTERPRISE)